I will tell you that I do watch TV/screen time about 10 hours a week for pure enjoyment/media consumption purposes. Maybe a little more during certain championship runs involving a Boston team or two… YET!
The time I have available to pursue a variety of productive and regenerative activities has continued to expand.
Apparently, I’m dragging the average for America down…as the average American is spending 35 hours a week (168 hours are in a week btw) watching TV/screen media…
The average American according to this Nielsen study in 2016 and this NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/business/media/nielsen-survey-media-viewing.html ) states that the average American is spending over 5 hours A DAY consuming TV from a variety of screens with over 4 hours being consumed as live TV.
This means that there is a significant portion of the population in this country consuming way more than 5 hours a day.
Are you one of these people that is burning 5 or more hours a day?
If so, are you also one of the many average people that says that they have no time to workout, to get enough sleep, or to follow through on that promise you made to yourself?
What is the compelling reason for you to consume so much media anyway?
Are you truly taking any action or benefiting personally from your media consumption?
Or are you a voyeur perhaps living through an imagined set/script through the characters on the screen?
Are you retreating to your media consumption to avoid your own reality?
What if you took a promise to yourself to spend 1 hour a day instead of watching that random sitcom or Netflix binging – on yourself?
What if you instead – began cultivating a habit that you have been meaning to take on?
Perhaps it is a daily walk?
Perhaps it is getting to bed 30 minutes earlier?
Perhaps it is reading that book or taking an online class?
The point is – if you were just ‘fractionally disciplined’ with your 1 hour take back – could you actually develop something about yourself that is way more personally relevant?
Could you commit to a daily promise to yourself — like you follow through on firing up the iPad to watch something on Hulu or the episodes you have cached on that DVR of yours?
I wonder if you could build upon this after 30 days of cultivating your word to yourself, and to begin the process of being less average and more of your truly unique self.